ZIMBABWE: Nhoro Safaris - Elephant Hunt Report

[IvW]

The owner is also the PH, Gordon Stark. He grew up in the US, and has now been a dual citizen of the US and SA for the past 30 years. There is one chalet in camp for Gordon and one chalet for the hunter, so it is a one-on-one situation with no possibility of anyone else in camp.

Not possible......or legal......

 

[Bejane]

Quote "Gordon does have areas closer to Hwange Park where you can hunt kudu and impala. Given my focus was elephant I did not travel to these areas."

Let me tell you that, that area will hold more Elephant than the Communal land you hunted in. If you had gone there you would have got your Elephant

Something not quite right about this hunt. Who was the Zim operator or the person with quota in that communal land?

 

[VertigoBE]

I’m very sorry to hear you were not successful on your hunt, this is hard for the mind to swallow. Well done in keeping your spirits up!

It is strange though that you did not see more game around. Unless the region sees some very heavy poaching (but then the Owner/PH, should have mentioned this on beforehand) there should always be some impala, steenbok, duiker, kudu, baboon, etc around.

 

[Bejane]

he mentioned he was in a communal land, which is where the local tribes people live/farm etc. So game will be very scarce and transient at best. There is normally a high degree of poaching/snaring etc in those areas

 

[Andrew62]

Gents, I word of caution. Zimbabwean law requires a Zim PH conducts the hunt and a pre requisite of the Zim license is that you have Zim nationality. Secondly, I do not know of any non exportable elephant licenses for foreigners. Non exportable should ring alarm bells- it is usually Problem animal control which is only legal for Zimbabwe nationals. So a South African outfitter, no Zim PH and a non- export elephant- tread carefully online and on the ground.

Nhoro, I finally had the time today to drive to my cabin and unpack from my trip. Specifically, I was wanting to look at the “Letter of Invitation” for my hunt. Now that I have, it certainly clears up some questions I was having while hunting, and certainly after your post concerning my hunt.

While on my hunt, I could not understand why the black driver/tracker was making all of the decisions about where/when/how to hunt. I now see the black Zimbabwean guy, who I thought was just a tracker, was in fact the safari operator/owner and Gordon, who I had dealt with, was an employee, or perhaps you call it an agent of the Zimbabwe operator. Either way, the black Zimbabwe guy was the one making the hunting decisions.

At Parks and Wildlife, the black Zimbabwe outfitter did the talking, now that I know he was the actual operator, I understand that better too.

Years ago I booked a hunt in the Eastern Cape of South Africa with a safari outfitter, when I got there the guy who guided me was a local native of that area, he took me out hunting each day. While I did have a decent time, it certainly was a challenge communicating and talking about life to someone who has no idea of life outside of their own little area. This would have been the same situation where I hunted last week had Gordon not been there to help facilitate the hunt. I’m grateful to both the safari operator and Gordon for working together to make these hunts more enjoyable.

I did this exact hunt with this group in 2019, neither then or this time, did I pick up on who was the actual owner/operator, I always assumed it was Gordon.

Thank you for catching the error of me claiming Gordon was the owner/operator in my hunt report. I am sad that my poor explanation of this situation has potentially caused undue frustration and harm to a hunting outfit because I misunderstood who was truly the owner/operator.